Freshman, please write an essay on "My College Life"

the diversity of my university life

Look! There is a rainbow! On the first day of my university life, when I walked into the campus, there was a rainbow bridging over the fountain, I hadn't seen rainbow for a long time. I was so excited, and leaped high with joy. My ponytail danced with my happiness. It was a propitious sign indicated that my life in university would be colorful, and actually it is !

After my entry into university, I found my life so busy. What I should do is not only gaining the scholarship but also being a good monitor and leader of shanghai university percussion band. I got the 1st and 2nd price of scholarship in my 2 years of study. I organized charity donations for schoolmates with financial difficulty or disease. Every week, I give drum lesson to new members of our percussion band. And there are always a lot of non-business performances, such as entertaining guests, celebrating party, cultural exchange with foreign students delegations and their bands. Of course, part-time job is indispensable in my vacations. I ask for no payment but aim at getting accustomed to the society.

< p>Sometimes, my friends advise me not to tire myself out with such a tight schedule. I wake up before the rooster crow, and continue working till very late when others are enjoying their sweet dreams. Every time I come back from the rehearsal of percussion band, I have to finish my homework with the help of my own charged light becaus

e of the blackout in out dormitory. Maybe such kind of life is something like an ascetic, but we should work hard and try hard in our youth, aren't we?

When I represented shanghai university to take part in the POND's new century lady competition held in May, when I show off on the stage, when I emerged as “the girl of vitality”, I made use of every bit of time to compensate the classes I had missed, I made use of every chance to learn from other girls with vitality, versatility and intelligence, I made use of this opportunity to present our university students' state of mind.

There is a little bitterness in my busy life, but at the same time, there is sweetness. It is colorful. I make fun out of it. I love it. When I snatch a little leisure I lie on the green grass, reading books, I cripple myself in the window-seat in our library ---the 2nd largest in shanghai---I absorb knowledge like a hungry sponge, I wonder along the bank of river, listening to oriels in willows and get a splendid sunset view of the campus. The sky is drunk with the sunset; I am drunk with the sweetness of my like.

Besides study, music is the most important part of my life. I began to learn piano at 6 and drum at 11. In school, I teach students to play jazz drums, kettledrums, xylophone and so on. We give performances in many universities to popularize percussion and to bring music to them. I've learned drums for so many years and it can't be separated from my life now. It is my beat

ing heart, my pulse, veins and arteries. When I play it, I wanna move my body, I can sit on my chair anymore I can't help swinging I communicate with the audience I call upon them to join me with the beat of drums the rhythm of music and the fragmentation of youth. Hi, come on!

In one summer vacation, I volunteered to teach my neighborhood community and taxi drivers to learn 100 English sentences for APEC. I made great efforts to walk out of my air-conditioned room and walk into the hot and suffocating weather. Some of these people didn't have the opportunity to get good education, and even didn't know ABC! I tried hard to find and easy way to teach them. For example, how to remember “the Oriental TV tower”? I put “tower” as “galoshes” in shanghai dialect. It is not the right way to teach and learn English like this, but actually it is the only way . In the end of my vacation, they could use some daily language. I was so glad and thought my efforts rewarding. Being a volunteer, I could myself serve the people and welcome the coming APEC. Being a university student living in ivory tower, I feel the hardness of taxi driver. It was at that time that I cherished most my opportunity to study in shanghai university which enjoys the first rate facilities in china. I will work hard and contribute myself to our country in the future.

And another summer vacation, I worked as a junior clerk in an import and export company. I didn't know how to draw up invoice; how to make customs dec

laration forms; how to fill the packing list or I even didn't know what is CIF! I strongly feel my lack of working and social experience; these are knowledge that can't be learned from textbooks. How to teach oneself, how to make a circle of acquaintances and get along with people of various characters---I think these are the preparation of entry into society and are more important than my scores in examinations. Working in the company, I threw away my t-shirts jeans track shoes and changed into suits dresses and high-hell shoes. It was far from comfortable and occasionally I stumbled over my steps. Oh! How difficult it is to be a white-collar office lady! One should pretend to be a noble lady, working all day before the table, wearing the dangerous high-heel shoes! Isn't it a challenge?

My life in university is like allegro. It is painstaking but worthwhile; bitter but sweet; tiring but exciting. The rainbow appeared in my first day of university life promised me a colorful life. Over the rainbow, there is the sky high above. The way ahead is long, I see no ending, yet high or low, I will search my will unbending!

Before going to college, my dream was to be a Harvard student. I have such a dream, firstly because of the halo that surrounds Harvard University, and also because I have always regarded studying law as my goal, and studying mathematics as my "backup", and Harvard's two majors are among the best in the United States. The best. In April 1979, a rejection letter shattered my dream. As for the reason, I guess it is because my SAT English score was too poor, only 550 points (if there had been New Oriental at that time, this might not have been the outcome).

When I was applying for college, I clearly knew that my own conditions were insufficient and I couldn’t guarantee which university I would be able to attend, so I applied to 12 schools at once. In this way, I felt that I could take the initiative It's in your own hands. Looking back at that time, my teachers probably hated me to death, because the application materials for college required letters of recommendation written by teachers to students, and for me, they had to write so many letters at once (there were no computers at the time, and each recommendation letter The letters need to be written by the teacher himself).

Finally, I entered Columbia University, which is a very good school with well-known law and mathematics departments. Columbia gives students a lot of room for development and allows students to study a wide range of courses. When I was a freshman, I spent most of my time studying art, history, music, philosophy and other professional courses, and was exposed to a lot of things. I think this is an opportunity for me to find my own interests. To this day, I still remember what an old professor in the philosophy department said: "Do you know what make a difference is? Imagine there are two worlds, one with you and one without you, and maximize the difference between the two. This That’s the meaning of your life.”

Let’s talk about my Columbia law dream. At that time, I mainly studied "political science", which was a "pre-law" major. However, after taking a few "Political Science" classes, I found that I had no interest in them. I couldn't muster up the energy to come to class every day, which was very distressing. One of the classes was so boring that I basically slept in every class. The only choice was whether to sleep in the classroom or in the dormitory. After I slept until the middle of the semester, my average grade was barely enough to get a C. I dropped the course the day before the deadline to avoid the disaster of having my scholarship canceled because my average grade was less than 3.0.

When I mentioned the frustration of studying law to my family, they all encouraged me to change my major. My sister said, "Didn't you finish your sophomore year of mathematics in high school and win the state mathematics championship? Why don't you switch to the mathematics department?" However, this brought me to my second trouble. After I entered college, the school arranged for me to join a "mathematical genius class" where all the top mathematicians at Columbia were gathered. There were only seven people in each class. But soon, I found that my math suddenly changed from "the best" to the "worst". At this time, I realized that although I was the "state champion", the state I was in was Tennessee, which is called "countryside", and when I met these real "mathematical geniuses" from California or New York "Not only was my skill inferior to others, I was even timid when asking questions, for fear that my classmates would see that my real level as a "state champion" was not very good. As a result, I fell further and further behind, and to this day I still "semi-understand" this course (this is another proof that "silence is not golden"). After I finished this course, I deeply realized that those "mathematical geniuses" were obsessed with mathematics because of its "beauty", but that was not the case for me. On the one hand, I envy them for finding their favorite; on the other hand, I regret to find that I am neither a mathematical genius nor obsessed with its "beauty", because I don't want the meaning of my life to be to understand The beauty of mathematics.

In this way, I said goodbye to the Harvard I yearned for, the law I chose, and the mathematics I was proud of.

Memories of my college life (2): Because I know computers, I became a great person on campus

Without Harvard, law, and mathematics, where will my future go? Fortunately there are computers.

Actually, I had a strong interest in computers when I was in high school. When I was in high school, I was lucky. The school had an antique IBM machine. At that time, in 1977, computers still needed to be used by punching cards (that is, punching holes in the cards one by one, and then punching the stack) Cards with holes in them are entered into the computer). One weekend, I wrote a program that solved a complex mathematical equation and then printed the result. Because the machine ran very slowly, I went home after writing the program. When I returned to school on Monday, I was suddenly called by the teacher and scolded me: "Do you know that all our paper has been printed by you!" It turns out that this mathematical equation has countless solutions, and the program continued to work after I left on Friday. When it is running, it keeps printing results continuously. The printing paper at that time was a thick stack with each sheet connected together, and such a box of paper might cost the school dozens of dollars. As a result, I used a program to print all the paper, and of course the teacher was very angry.

When I was a freshman, I was surprised that I could use a computer without punching cards, and I was even more surprised that such a fun thing could also be a "major". So I took a computer course and got my first "A+" after entering college.

In addition to winning praise from teachers and classmates, I also felt a shock: Can this kind of technology be able to think in the future? Can humans be made more efficient? Could computers one day replace the human brain? Solving problems like this is the meaning of life!

At the end of my freshman year, I found a job working in a computer center. They would pay me some money based on my time. Although it was not much, it was also an encouragement. Students would come to me to solve any computer problems they had. Moreover, "being computer literate" was a very fashionable thing in school at that time, and everyone thought this person was too cool. Even at that time, my ID was different from others: most people's IDs were "department name + name". For example, those who studied computer science were "cs.kaifulee", those who studied politics were "ps.kaifulee", and mine was "cu.kaifulee", cu stands for Columbia University, Columbia + Kai-Fu Lee, the same as the president, so awesome!

Of course, I also did a lot of boring things, such as making programs to guess other people’s passwords. At that time, people didn't know that passwords could be cracked. After I "hacked" someone's account, I would send some prank letters in his name. Once, I used the account of a male classmate to post a "Single Girl Looking for Friends" notice on BBS, and he received a bunch of love letters inexplicably. This classmate is also working in Beijing now. I guess he still doesn’t know about it until today. I will remember to tell him next time I see him that I posted the notice.

At that time, Columbia’s law department ranked third in the United States, and the computer department was just a newly established major. If I chose computer science, a major with a weak foundation, my future didn’t look very bright. If I choose to major in law, my future can probably be predicted: becoming a judge, lawyer, running for election, etc. Because there are many templates before me, I can follow the plan. When I chose computer science, I couldn’t even figure out what I wanted to do in the future. There was no such profession as a software engineer at that time. However, I was thinking more about "the meaning of life" and "my interests" (how boring and frustrating it is to do a job I don't like!), and I didn't let these real employment issues affect me. So in my sophomore year, I switched from "Political Science" to "Computer Science." At that time, a classmate from the physics department joked: "If any subject is suffixed with 'science', it is definitely not a real science. Look at you, jumping from one 'fake science' to another, jump here You can’t become a scientist even if you jump.”

Memories of my college life (3): 25 cents a day, playing games to 9999

I have another thing that most people don’t know.” Expertise: No. 1 in school at playing video games - no one can beat me.

Video games used to be much simpler than they are now. A game I often play is called Space Invader. There are four fortresses below the screen that can fire bullets. There are many monsters above, and you need to hit them one by one. The game consoles at that time were very "stupid", and the monsters didn't fly around very fast, but just moved slowly. This kind of game can only be played with coins, which costs 25 cents each time. I don’t have much money, and 25 cents a day is not a small amount for me, so I only bring 25 cents to play every day, and I go there after class. Hit once or twice.

Is there any challenge in such a mentally retarded game? have! The score setting in the machine only has four digits. The highest score is 9999 points, and the score will automatically return to 0 after that. Moreover, the points of each fairy are different, some are one point, some are three points, and some are ten points, so when you hit close to 9999, you have to calculate carefully, because if you hit one by mistake and it exceeds 9999, it will return 0, you have to start over. In order to keep my record as the highest score every day, I will not play blindly like other people, but calculate my own score while playing. I will commit suicide when I get 9999 points and stop playing. In this way, the game becomes very difficult. And I couldn’t play very well at the beginning, I needed to practice again and again, which was also a big “investment”.

In the end, the result of my 25 cents every day was almost 9999, and I had already practiced to perfection. I write the abbreviation KFL every time so that people who come to play later will see this record and know who has the highest score. This is still very fulfilling.

There were many students playing games at that time, and they even had to queue up. If I went, everyone would say: "Look, the master KFL is here!"

I was very disciplined in high school and never played this kind of game. , when I got to college, I suddenly lost the constraints of my parents and felt more free, so I started playing games. Think back. I was very lucky at that time, because these games were not exciting enough to make me really addicted. I only spent 25 cents a day to relax for 20 minutes. If there had been any "World of Warcraft" or "CS" at that time, I might have become addicted to Internet cafes and ruined my life.

In this way, I played games for a semester. What made me break away from the "clutch" of video games? It's bridge. I learned to play bridge while having lunch with friends in high school. When I entered college, I joined a bridge club and discovered that the gameplay was different: everyone had the same deck of cards, so we could compete to see who could play the best. . At that time, perhaps because of the Chinese people's "queuing mentality", I especially liked to participate in bridge competitions, the purpose was to come first. When I first entered college, in order to get first place, I very naively found a "bridge club" where old gentlemen and old ladies gathered to play. After playing for a while, I felt that it was time to change places, otherwise I would often get the looks of the old ladies. In addition, his poker skills are getting worse and worse. At that time, there were bridge competitions in many areas, so we took buses to distant places to compete. We also went to Ivy League schools such as Yale and Harvard to compete, or to participate in national competitions. Since then, we have won many medals and trophies. One of my bridge partners later participated in the "Bermuda Cup" (a bridge competition similar to the football World Cup) and won third place in the world. He later became a professional bridge player and lived a comfortable life. I sometimes jokingly tell people: "If I had kept playing, maybe I could have achieved something in the field of bridge!"

Perhaps, some people think that there is no difference between playing bridge and playing video games. In fact, the difference is very big: bridge can cultivate logical thinking skills and also exercise interpersonal communication skills. However, I became too addicted to bridge during my freshman year and played 30 hours a week, which seriously affected my studies.

Because of playing video games and bridge, my freshman grade was only a 3.26. But since I found my favorite - computers, I suddenly feel very interested in learning. Every time the teacher gave me a programming exercise, I had to finish it without sleeping at night (even though the teacher gave me a week). At that time, I no longer wanted to be first in bridge, but wanted to be first in computer science. Driven by this kind of interest, my grades in my sophomore, junior, and senior years were all 4.0. This made up for my playfulness in my freshman year, and enabled me to graduate with first place in the computer science department.

Memories of my college life (4) Discovering another world while working

When I was in college, I relied on family support for almost two years. Needing money, I relied on working on my own to earn money to complete my studies. Although my family is relatively well-off in Taiwan, by American standards we still cannot afford college tuition. At that time, the school would provide part-time job opportunities to students from such families. The usual approach was as follows: one-third of the tuition fee was a scholarship "given" to you by the school, and the other third was a loan "lent" to you by the school. One-third of them need to work to earn their own money (this model of raising tuition fees but allowing everyone to afford college is very good and worth studying in Chinese universities at this stage).

Working is a good opportunity for college students to learn. I am relatively lucky and have more part-time work experience.

When I first started working, I couldn’t do anything, so I had to be a tutor. The school assigned me to teach some Mexican or black teenagers in the black area. The teaching place was in "Harlem", one of the most dangerous areas in the United States, very close to Columbia University.

I was studying art history at the time, and I often went to the museum to see some paintings. After seeing the paintings, I took the bus to tutor. Once, I accidentally took two extra stops. When I arrived at the center of Harlem, I was still hesitant to spend an extra ticket to ride back to school. Later, I chose to walk back to save some money, but I made a mistake. Big mistake: I suddenly saw a completely different world - rows of homeless people, drug addicts, people with weapons... Although I was not hurt physically, I was shocked and a little scared in my heart. . When I passed through them, although they didn't do anything to me, I was always very uneasy and didn't know what might happen at any time.

The people there may have never seen an oriental face in their lives. When they saw me, they yelled "wow" at me in Chinese they made up. I finally walked to the teaching center step by step, taught the last class, and never wanted to go there again.

At that time, I just started applying for an internship in the computer center. The part-time job here has changed a lot. I can get a lot of authority and do a lot of things. During the summer vacation, I also made some plans with some companies and wrote some programs. The most interesting thing was to write a program for weighing diamonds. It was 1980, the summer vacation of my freshman year.

There were three summer vacations in college. I worked in the computer center during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. I did two jobs during the summer between my sophomore and junior years. One was in The story of working in law school as told in "Be Your Best Self" was also about working at Goldman Sachs, and the person who introduced me to the job was someone I met while playing bridge. After the bridge game, we had a more interesting chat, and they said, since you majored in computer science, why don’t you come here and give it a try? The interview was very interesting, because there is some very sensitive information in the company, and they will use a lie detector machine to test the interviewees. I have never seen a lie detector machine before, and although I have not done anything bad, I am still a little nervous.

At the beginning, the interviewer asked: "Are you an alcoholic?"

"No."

"Are you a drug addict?"

< p> "No."

"Have you ever embezzled public funds?"

"No."

"Have you ever gambled?"

< p> "No."

"Are you sure not? Why did your heartbeat suddenly speed up?"

At that time, I was thinking: Is bridge considered gambling? I did make a small bet a few times while playing bridge with my classmates. Then he continued to ask: "Why is your heart beating so fast? How much money do you lose in a week? One thousand? Five hundred?" I quickly explained: "I just played bridge with my classmates for fun." He asked again: "Really? ? Please tell the truth!" - a very stern tone. I sighed in my heart: What a pity! Did I ruin such a good job just because I played bridge? Unexpectedly, the interviewer finally said to me: "You have a very good character, come ready to work!" It turned out that because this job can come into contact with a lot of sensitive data (such as the stocks that Goldman Sachs will recommend), they were afraid that the summer job would To make a fortune out of this data, they have to scare every applicant so they can find candidates with bad character.

Goldman Sachs is a very good company with excellent employees. The stock analysts there wear suits and meet clients every day. But none of them know much about computers, and a lot of data still needs to be calculated manually. In order to free themselves from the heavy calculation work, they wanted me to help with some tasks. What they thought would take me a whole day to complete based on their experience actually took me about an hour to complete using a computer program. I spent the rest of my time there learning a lot about investment and management.

In addition to working, college student club activities are also very helpful for growth. I regret very much today that I did not participate in any club activities when I was in college (except for the bridge club). Although when I was in high school, I participated in many clubs and was very active. I had many good records of participating in social work: vice president of the student union, starting a business three times... I had a very rich experience. But at that time, I forced myself to do these things just to add one more line to my resume when applying to college. Looking back now, the most valuable thing I got out of it was the ability to relate to people, not the lines on my college application.

Memories of my college life (End) Good friends who make cakes and eat cakes together

After arriving at college, I suddenly found that "dealing with people is very stressful." At that time, there were not many Chinese students, and there was no dedicated Chinese circle (of course, thinking about it now, it may not be a good thing to have such a circle). Sometimes, when I walk into a party and see everyone chatting, drinking, joking, and communicating in such a divergent manner, I always find it difficult to open my mouth when I walk over to someone I don’t know. So after going to several freshman parties, I asked myself how could I be like this, unable to even open my mouth? I was trying so hard to talk to people but I was worried that no one would listen to me.

And every time, everyone is scattered, communicating together in twos and threes. I always feel bored and lonely standing there, and I don’t know how to integrate into such a loose communication. So, I slowly quit, closed myself off, stopped attending parties, and stopped making friends. At that time, the only friends I could make were those I met while playing bridge, playing video games, and my roommates (about this, looking back now, I really should not have held myself back at the time. Later, when I was studying for my Ph.D., While working, I gradually discovered that social skills are still very important. Unfortunately, I didn’t practice them properly when I was in college, so I had to make up for this class later).

When I was in college, there were four of us in a dormitory, and every two people shared a bedroom. I have a very good relationship with my roommate. He comes from a working-class family and often tells me about his upbringing, and I will also tell me some things about myself. We have always been good friends and he still calls me often. A while ago, when I was in a lawsuit, he called me specifically and said, "Do you need someone to vouch for your character?" Although I was very grateful to him, I told him that there was no problem with my character. No need for his guarantee. He added: "Actually, I also know this. I just want you to know that there is a friend who will always stand by your side."

At that time, I was working in a computer center and I would help him with his homework. What to do; while he works in the kitchen, he can bring me some delicious food to share. One time when the school was on spring break, he said, "We have 25 kilograms of cream cheese left in the kitchen. We have to throw it away anyway. How about we use it to make cakes?" I said, "What a great idea!". Neither of our families are very wealthy, so we didn’t go home for vacation in order to save money. After all, air tickets are very expensive. So, we planned to make 20 cakes with these cheeses, so that we could eat cakes every day and save money on meals during the holidays.

Having made up our mind, the two of us started to get busy, but it didn’t take long for me to regret this decision. Because 25 kilograms of cheese could not be mixed with an ordinary mixer, we had to pour the raw materials into a large bucket, each person took a stick and stirred vigorously. It took more than four hours to stir, and our arms were tired and sore. What makes me regret even more is that when we start eating the same cheesecake every day, it feels like there are always endless cakes waiting for you. By the end of the meal, we had reached the point where we didn’t even want to see the cake or even mention the word “cake”. Until one day seven or eight days later, he suddenly said to me: "Kaifu, great news!" I asked him what it was, and he said: "The remaining cake is moldy!" That day, the two of us took the subway to Chinatown. The cheapest Cantonese restaurant with the largest menu ordered six dishes to celebrate the moldy cake.

We didn’t eat cheesecake again for several years. But many years later, whenever we met, we always joked that we should go have something to eat together. What to eat? Eat cheesecake! Ha ha!

In this way, the cake will get moldy, but the friendship derived from the cake is unusually long-lasting.

(End)